Various forms of storage systems are used today. These forms include direct attached storage (DAS) network attached storage (NAS) systems, storage area networks (SANs), and others. Network storage systems are commonly used for a variety of purposes, such as providing multiple users with access to shared data, backing up data and others.
A storage system typically includes at least one computing system executing a storage operating system for storing and retrieving data on behalf of one or more client computing systems (“clients”). The storage operating system stores and manages shared data containers in a set of mass storage devices.
The storage system may be implemented as a clustered storage system having a plurality of nodes. The storage system can be presented to client systems as virtual storage systems.
The virtual storage systems may use one or more applications for processing client requests. It is desirable not to execute a copy of the application for different virtual storage system because that would consume a large amount of memory. Continuous efforts are being made to enable access to virtual storage systems and the processes used by the virtual storage systems, without having to run multiple copies of the same application/processes.